And what of Ebon Plague? Please don't ignore that issue. It's huge.

As stated above by someone Bloodworms are broken, they are currently useless and really need to be made into a tanking asset. They do almost none of the self healing I currently see as a blood tank. They are a neat idea, but they need some serious buffs to become meaningful and help mitigate damage we take.

Rune Tap is worthless, seriosly as a blood tank we are already hurting for runes so we can snap off death and decay to taunt and a boil blood later in the rotation. The 20% healing of rune tap that costs 4 talent points is simply not worth it. We need something passive there that buffs healing via attacks. Perhaps something like this, replace rune strike and improved rune strike with

Blood Cleave (1 point): Increases the chance to crit of Blood Strike and Heart Strike by 2% and increases crit bonus damage of Blood Strike and Heart Strike by 20%.

Blood Leech (3 points): Gives your Blood Strikes and Heart Strikes a 10%, 20%, and 30% chance to heal the DK for 100% of the damage of the Blood or Heart Strike.

That would be vastly more useful then rune tap, even though at 30% chance it would go off about as often as the re-use time of rune tap and with our damage of Heart Strike the amount of healing would be no more then a improved run tap on all but the biggest crits (which in tank gear are not huge).

Vengence is a great tool for solo plowing through 10 mobs, but as a tanking tool it is useless and does almost no healing. The tank is rarely going to get the kill shot on a mob, which is required for vengence to work. Plus we need healing mostly on boss mobs and getting healing at the end of those fights is totally pointless and not helping us tank in the slightest. Blood does not need more self healing for solo grinding through mobs, change vengence to be more of a tanking tool and less of a soloing tool.

If you want to see things that would really help Blood tanks, talents that would actually work. Look at the Glyph of Death Strike. The effect on this glyph is far more powerful then any of the supposed blood tanking/healing talents and is the type of thing we need fairly deep in the blood tree. We need this type of effect, every 5 of your runic power increases the damage and healing by 2% is powerful, it helps with tanking, but it is not blood specific. What blood needs is things like that, you can even ignore the damage, all we really need is healing.

A fix that would make a point to going past 44 as a blood tank would be changing blood gorged such that the 5 points spent make the DK heal for 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10% of their melee damage. Make it a heal instead of a 10% damage buff if over 75%. The fact we need to be over 75% makes it really pointless as a tank since when we need the extra damage for extra healing it is not there.

For DRW if you made the DRW's attacks heal the DK as they would normally be healed it would help huge. AKA when you pop DRW and then snap off a Death Strike you could get healing from both your own Death Strike AND the healing from the DRW's Death Strike. This would make it quasy useful in tanking. With some of the changes above done goving us more healing via strikes DRW could actually morph into a oh sh!7 tanking button which would be nice.

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Q u o t e:
This makes the ability too good in PvP, which as I said, is a problem. I predict it will be something like 150% instead of 200% weapon damage, but 150% threat.

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The funny thing about rune strike is that I NEVER use the thing when tanking. I am blood specced and as I have said before we live and die by self healing. My self healing suffers GREATLY if I am not at full runic power so that the Glyph of Death Strike has full effect. If I start snapping off rune strikes my runic power plummets and my survivability as a Blood Specced tank goes down accordingly because of that glyph. If you dropped the damage of Rune Strike to 1, gave it huge threat generation, and made it consume no runic power, that would make it ideal for me as a blood tank. Of course I don't expect 1 damage, but my point is even at it's current overpowered damage output I am forced to shelve it as a Blood Tank who does not get enough healing to compete with the other specs as it is.

If I am to use that rune strike for agro generation I am in trouble, because now I have the choice of building threat, losing my self healing, and tanking terribly, or building runic power, not getting as much threat generation, but having alot more healing from death strikes that often keep me alive on non-heroic boss mob fights as a blood tank. The blood tree simply does not have enough of it's own healing that works to allow me to forgo such a crucial boost as that glyph offers.

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Q u o t e:
a two-hander runeforge defense enchant.

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This is so brilliantly simple, why have I not seen anyone mention it before? Great idea.

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The funny thing about rune strike is that I NEVER use the thing when tanking. I am blood specced and as I have said before we live and die by self healing. My self healing suffers GREATLY if I am not at full runic power so that the Glyph of Death Strike has full effect. If I start snapping off rune strikes my runic power plummets and my survivability as a Blood Specced tank goes down accordingly because of that glyph. If you dropped the damage of Rune Strike to 1, gave it huge threat generation, and made it consume no runic power, that would make it ideal for me as a blood tank. Of course I don't expect 1 damage, but my point is even at it's current overpowered damage output I am forced to shelve it as a Blood Tank who does not get enough healing to compete with the other specs as it is.

If I am to use that rune strike for agro generation I am in trouble, because now I have the choice of building threat, losing my self healing, and tanking terribly, or building runic power, not getting as much threat generation, but having alot more healing from death strikes that often keep me alive on non-heroic boss mob fights as a blood tank. The blood tree simply does not have enough of it's own healing that works to allow me to forgo such a crucial boost as that glyph offers.

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What are you talking about? Rune Strike is one of the best TPS abilities you have, especially since it does not cost Runes to use.

Your self-healing is nearly negligable compared to what the healer should be doing for you.

@Alive - it has been mentioned numerous times on the DK forums, and a couple times here in the Tanking forums, that I have seen.

GC: A Def PROC sigil seems nearly a waste, since we would need to be def capped without it. I understand Blizz will not put stats on sigils/relics, but can I suggest this:

Sigil of Undending Grace:
Every time you avoid damage from three attacks in a row (dodge and parry), your armor, magical resistances, dodge, and parry are increased by 5% for (5-10 is my suggestion) seconds.

and we now have a viable tanking sigil that increases with our scaling.

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Q u o t e:
GC:

Please give us a preview of how you are buffing Blood tanking? Specifically AoE?

Is it too much to hope for that we will get a talent or glyph that makes DnD pbaoe? I would disappointed if it was simply a buff to blood boil or something similar.

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I posted this earlier as a suggestion for Blood AE as it seems to fit the talent tree well in my opinion.

"It may only be my pesonal preference because I don't bring this skill in my talent specs but I would like to have this talent replace Bloodworms. My suggestion is a 3 point talent in the same spot. For example call it Ravenous Cleave and next swing damages self for X% of total health costs X number of runes. Has an X second cooldown, and deals X% weapon damage to target and a nearby foe(s). Targets affected by Blood Plauge receive damage additional damage equal to X% of the Death Knight's total health."


I also really like cone style AE as well such as the Warrior's Shockwave talent. Something that I would have almost endless fun using would be an ability similar to this. Lets just call it Vampiric Wave and it will do a Damage over Time effect for X seconds on foes within X yards in a cone shape in front of the Death Knight based for X damage based on attack power. The Death Knight will be healed for X% of damage dealt. (an alternative to this last part of the talent would be while this effect is taking place then add additional damage to those under the effect of blood plauge)


*Edit: I read more of your post after you edited it.

How about swapping Unholy Blight ability to blood where the Bloodworms ability is. Give it a different name and tweak the effect and damage.

Then in its place just give the Unholy Tree Carrion Swarm from WC3. (or maybe Blood needs Carrion Swarm... It's one of those cone AE abilities that I find so fun I would just like to see it added period actually.)

I'd like to add that while I was not in beta I did read the beta forums regularly and there were many DK in beta who voiced their opinion that RS was not needed, it was boring and that the damage it brought to the class should have been distributed to the "active" attacks.

RS is the best scaling ability a DK and if I consider that our other strikes are only a percentage of weapon damage, it makes me wonder how well we will scale from T7-T9 or S5-S7. I agree with the beta DKs that removing RS and buffing the % of our base strikes by 5-10% would be a much more fun and usefull than simply macroing RS to every attack.

Bone armor is not fine because the charges on it is way too little. If you consider reducing the damage taken from bone shields, at least increase the DPS % and charges on it so it'll be worth casting? I think DPS dks use it currently not just for dmg but also to survive some pulls especially trash mobs or 5 man.

DKs are NOT OP in pvp, there are some classes that are truly OP and can kill 99% of every other player, DKs are not one of them. We're strong only against some classes, just like how each class works atm. The only people that actually have a problem against DKs are those of low level or those that just didn't gear right enough atm. I think the changes really should be implanted after quite a while. It's been less than a month since DKs were released on the official server, I really think should wait til higher dungeons and at least a season of pvp before we deem them to be "OP"

Now ret paladins. They're OP. Bubble is way too good as it is. IBF isn't. Bubble duration is long enough to let a ret paladin burst down 2 enemies at once. I don't see how that's not even more OP.

personally, I found runestrike to proc more against warriors and paladins that try to gank me rather than rogues. So are you sure it's the rogues thats complaining, or is it just another way so that we'll die even faster to paladins?

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Q u o t e:

Sigil of Undending Grace:
Every time you avoid damage from three attacks in a row (dodge and parry), your armor, magical resistances, dodge, and parry are increased by 5% for (5-10 is my suggestion) seconds.

and we now have a viable tanking sigil that increases with our scaling.

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I believe that this goes very counter to the design philosophy when designing all items. Because this is not a rating, it will *always* be unbelieveably good. That is, it will have the same effectiveness at 55, 65, 80, 90, and 100 since it is a flat % increase.

This is very similar to how gear does not have flat %haste/%crit/%dodge on it, because it would scale indefinitely with level and would never need to be replaced. With regards to relics/idols, the same goes with reducing the Runic Power/Rage cost of a core ability. Because ability costs for these systems do not increase with level, it would scale indefinitely.

With that in mind, it will probably be something like the current (and not yet updated, I might add) Idol of Terror. A % proc off a frequently used tanking ability (Mangle for Druids) that gives you a temporary avoidance/mitigation boost (65 agi proc for a few seconds)

If the icebound fortitude changes to go through, which I can understand given the cd of it, any chance of strangulates cd being reduced to 1min, or lowering ams cd? atleast change our pvp glove bonus. 5 seconds off of a 2min cd is nothing.

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Q u o t e:


I believe that this goes very counter to the design philosophy when designing all items. Because this is not a rating, it will *always* be unbelieveably good. That is, it will have the same effectiveness at 55, 65, 80, 90, and 100 since it is a flat % increase.

This is very similar to how gear does not have flat %haste/%crit/%dodge on it, because it would scale indefinitely with level and would never need to be replaced. With regards to relics/idols, the same goes with reducing the Runic Power/Rage cost of a core ability. Because ability costs for these systems do not increase with level, it would scale indefinitely.

With that in mind, it will probably be something like the current (and not yet updated, I might add) Idol of Terror. A % proc off a frequently used tanking ability (Mangle for Druids) that gives you a temporary avoidance/mitigation boost (65 agi proc for a few seconds)

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I was hoping to include a single sigil that could be used nearly to endgame (sunwell endgame level) since Blizz is apparently being extremely stingy with sigils.

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Again, this makes the ability too good in PvP if it scales of Resilience, which all serious PvP players have in abundance. In PvP you can just use it too often. In long boss fights, being able to use it often is cool. But PvP fights tend to be very short, which means you have IBF available a lot. Scaling it with def isn't intended to force you to stack def for PvP. It allows us to tone down the damage reduction for PvP overall while still ensuring that actual tanks can use it to tank.

I think my reference to the paladin bubble threw a lot of people. Of course the abilities aren't all that similar. What I meant was that IBF is being used too often in PvP to avoid damage. It's just too good an ability for a class with a lot of short-cooldown abilities.

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Then increase the cooldown on it, then scale it so the higher def you get the shorter the cooldown will be. And by increasing the cooldown I mean by 30 seconds max, nothing more. Unless the intention for blizzard was so that no DK can leave town without bringing a friend if they even want a chance of surviving against gankers.

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Q u o t e:

Bone Shield is not fine. When the cooldown is off, DKs are too squishy. If we buff their mitigation then Bone Shield turns them into the best tanks. We do plan on buffing Frost Presence’s armor and magic mitigation to compensate for nerfing Bone Shield. Your incoming damage should be the same, just smoother. We will also likely lower the cooldown of Anti-Magic Shell a little. All of this still needs a lot of testing however.

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Again bone shield is not fine because the damage buff on it is too little as well as the charges. If you really want to nerf the armor then change the dmg reduce to half of what it is right now. Increase the dmg by 2% since you're nerfing our other attack abilities, and increase the charges somewhat.

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Q u o t e:
We are adding more Sigils. We will likely add a defense proc sigil too and a two-hander runeforge defense enchant. (Dual wield tanks already have lots of +defense weapons available.)

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Hopefully there'll be sigils for DPS DKs too. There are already tons of Tank classes out there, please don't force DKs to be just another tank. I remember the intention for this expansion is so that any combo of classes can be brought to a raid. So far I have to say there's already a lack of DPS dks wanted in most 25 man raids or 10 man. Hence our dps should be buffed more than our tanking should be.

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Scourge Strike is one of the strongest abilities a death knight can get, so we’re not convinced it needs to be buffed. Frost Strike can’t be avoided because it competes against Death Coil, which can’t be avoided. Without the anti-avoidance, Frost death knights have trouble with threat. Unholy death knights can do strong Death Coils as well as Unholy Blight, so we don’t anticipate a problem here.

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UH dks do have problems with threat as well. I do realize I have to pop IBF sometimes just cause I'm worried about my threat and that boss will turn around and 1 shot me. I think at least SS should be none parriable or dodgable, it is shadow dmg after all, if anything it should be resisted that's about it.


I fail to see blizzard trying to improve things for DPS Dks, rather force us to become more like tanks. especially with the amount of 10 man, I really highly doubt we need all 4 types of tanks.


[/quote]

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Q u o t e:
We are adding more Sigils. We will likely add a defense proc sigil too and a two-hander runeforge defense enchant. (Dual wield tanks already have lots of +defense weapons available.)

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I appreciate your efforts in communicating with the public to have these issues recitified. I'd like to bring up the new Runeforge Enchant you plan to bring for DKs having Crit Cap issues. I would like to suggest rather than making a new Runeforge enchant solely for this, that you tack it onto the already available tanking enchants we have. DKs will end up still going for Swordshattering once they no longer need the new Runeforge Defense enchant, which will make it just another bandaid fix.

My suggestion would be to have Swordshattering something like:

Affixes your two-handed rune weapon with a rune that increases Parry chance by 4%, increases defense rating by 10% and reduces the duration of Disarm effects by 50%. Modifying your rune weapon requires a Rune Forge in Ebon Hold.

This will allow you to make Sigils that won't be proc-based defense rating like you stated, and will give Tanking DKs more room to gem/enchant for other things along with defense rating.

I hope you read this and take it into consideration.

Somewhat useless post, but I wanted to say, "Thanks" to Ghostcrawler for the excellent communication!

I really appreciate it when I feel there is some solid communication about where the developers see the class going and actually read our inputs!

Muchas gracias!

Dont you fear making Frost pressence to good for PVP compared to the others?

Why didnt you increasing the cooldown of IBF instead of lowering the mitigation it provides?

Going out of my way in questions I just want to say that if IBF was too much for pvp but required in PVE making it scale of Def is a smart move to get that.

And I also have a question about the anihilation talent, are you happy with the way that is turning out for blood DKs? They cant really avoid speccing into it and its not so much about choice or style, if you are blood and pve you have to spec all the way to it in frost.

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Q u o t e:

We are adding more Sigils. We will likely add a defense proc sigil too and a two-hander runeforge defense enchant. (Dual wield tanks already have lots of +defense weapons available.)

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I think we're all on the same page here. DK's need more sigils. You know we need them. You're adding them. We know you're adding them. The real root question becomes: when? Speaking for just myself, I really don't want to have to wait until Ulduar and the next content patch to get some more useful sigils. It would be really helpful to see some kind of micropatch to get some better sigils in the game for use in early raid progress.

As someone who PvPs in frost pressence along with frost aura and acclimation I'm a bit concerned by your last statement on frost pressence.

Could you please elaborate on how you are considering changing it?

You mention "magic" mitigation and I'm really concerned you are giong to change it to a flat 10% damage reduction like defensive stance, which would completely suck. Please do something worthwhile for it like boost its armor bonus to 80 - 100% and put in some form percentage based bonus to magic resistnace in the ball park of 15% (ie 100 -> 115). I suggest this because I don't want to see it lose it's AP bonus when used with serated blades. Nor do I want to see frost pressence have a flat +resistance unless it stacks with frost aura or those 2 points (plus the 3 from acclimation) become less usefull in PvP.


As far as bone shield goes it needs a major nerf given the fact that we already have a base ability that works similarly. BS + IBF is currently too much and is really where the PvP complaints come from. I'd rather see IBF remain relatively high mitigation at around 40% and drop the internal cooldown on BS so it's not so overpowered for PvP and AOE yet it's still relatively usefull for boss tanking.